Ideas and opinions are dime a dozen. Everyone has one. But the odd one succeeds and the man becomes a millionaire! That one is a start-up. This one is political and just cannot win, an election for the Congress that is. It is that of an independent political analyst, Saquib Salim, who writes in The Wire that the Congress must change its game-plan if it wants to put a halt to PM Narendra Modi’s ‘Man Ki Baat.’
The modus operandi is: Counter Modi with the corruption issue. The voter has always voted for the “non-corrupt alternative.” Graft in the Modi government should be “unearthed” at any cost.
The opinion is that every government since 1987 has been toppled because of corruption allegations that led people to perceive it as corrupt and vote against it.
What stands out is that the opinion says there is only one issue that bothers the voter, election after election: corruption in high places – Bofors, 2G, CWG… It insists Ram Mandir, Love Jihad and Gujarat 2002 were never election issues.
It banks on history to make its point: Every government from Rajiv Gandhi’s to Manmohan Singh’s UPA-II was sent packing because of corruption allegations.
But Modi played a clever game. He mixed Hindutva with corruption to score big. The opinion asserts Modi succeeded because he fooled UPA to believe he won because of communal politics. This could be news to Modi!
The opinion says all issues except corruption should be kept at bay. It says this with a finality that does not ring true. Lots of “other issues” decide elections, from the price of onions to a poor monsoon; farmer unrest to completely unwarranted insults such as ‘Maut Ka Saudagar’, ‘Neech Kism Ka Aadmi’ and ‘Tu Chai Pe’. Remember the wrong twist of the tongue can drain votes.
The opinion’s intent is clear. Unearth something big like Bofors to link it with Modi and go to town with it. If corruption in his regime was the Achilles heel of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, it can’t but be that of PM Modi, too.
Believe it or not the opinion is of the view 2002 Gujarat riots and the bombings and riots that followed the demolition of the Babri Masjid did not influence voting patterns to bring about change in government.
But the opinion has been blindsided. It does not see that a deliberate move to make corruption alone an issue at the expense of communal politics will give a free hand to those bent on polarizing voters along communal lines. It will give ideas to people to foment violence to nudge voters. Confronted, they could always turn around and say, “Communalism is not even an issue in these elections?”
The startling thing is that – assuming all other things remain the same – by restricting all elections to the one key issue of corruption, in accordance with the opinion, the party in power can run a corruption-free regime or seen to be running a corruption-free government and keep on getting elected again and again.
Suppose the Congress takes the advice and keeps at bay all other issues including communal polarization and goes on a binge to unearth scams in the Modi regime but finds no chinks in Modi’s armour no matter how hard it tries and all in the one-and-half-year left to this Lok Sabha, what then?
Nothing, zilch. Modi returns to power and Rahul Gandhi can keep watching Star Wars in multiplexes with his buddies till he gets the Force. That forces the other question: why such an opinion at this point of time? Could it be that it descended on some people that despite Rahul’s temple run, the Hindu vote remained with the BJP and PM Modi succeeded in using “other issues kept at bay” to hammer home his message: NOTI, which expands to ‘None Other Than I’.
You see, it is Modi who is running a corruption-free government unless proved otherwise. The public perception so far is that the Modi government has no corrupt ministers. And the verdicts on 2G and Adarsh have helped the UPA get only a partially clean makeover.
There is National Herald still to go and the high court could overturn 2G. Gujarat has not changed public perception. The BJP did better than Congress in by-polls that took place on December 21 in Arunachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. Pakistan’s insult to the mangalsutra and the bindi will consolidate Hindu vote further. The ‘mini-surgical strike’ will bolster Modi’s ‘strong PM’ image.
In such a situation the opinion that Modi can be countered only with the corruption issue will fall flat. Sure, there is Jay Shah and Raffaele to build a perception of corruption around Modi. But if it has been presented out of a sense of insecurity in some seculars that the Congress too was going the BJP way with Rahul Gandhi’s temple run, then the opinion should be given a quiet burial because it doesn’t help the Congress at all.
To win the next election the Congress will have to embrace ‘Hinduism’ as opposed to Hindutva and wean a good number of Hindus from the fence to jump to his side and hope that the Muslim voter will do nothing brash and waste his vote on no-account regional parties.
That alone will help Rahul Gandhi get close to oust Modi. Otherwise, it will all be an exercise in futility. For tell what you may, Modi appears incorruptible. The ‘Na Khaunga Na Khilaunga’ boast has to be punctured but for that to happen, Rahul Gandhi will have to do a Deewar with ‘Mera Paas Maa Hai’ to counter Modi – unearth the Mother of All Scams to beat Modi with!
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